Considered wealthy and spoiled by some, Anna Chan, an American born Chinese woman, is freshly out of college. On a whim, she signs up to teach English overseas. Hoping to get sent to the glitter of Hong Kong or Beijing, where she can speak her native Mandarin and enjoy the trappings of the life she is accustomed to, she finds herself being sent to Mongolia, the birthplace of the famous Genghis Khan. Trying to come to grips with her emotions, she finds her appearance blends well with the native citizens in Ulaanbaator, their capital city, arguably, the coldest and most polluted city in the world. Unexpectedly, she meets David Alday, a foreign engineer with a mining background who was sent to Mongolia to stop a Chinese takeover of a new project slated to save the lives of countless citizens-the production of biofuel from algae. The couple quickly bond, but Anna is transferred northward to the edge of the country into the cold Russian wind to further her teaching, separating the lovers where she finds solace by adopting a feral wolf as a pet. From the windswept plains of Siberia to the Gobi desert, the two struggle to maintain contact in an upside-down world filled with romance and corruption, in a third-world country that is secretly hiding the city of the future. There, the couple must play a vital role to save an entire country, while efforts are afoot to stop them at all costs. For them, it's either kill or be killed.